Auro's Grotto
by Hawkflight7
Summary: New ruins from ancient society have been uncovered in a mine. What alchemical secrets could it possibly hold?


**Auro's Grotto - 1**

 **Summary: New ruins from ancient society have been uncovered in a mine. What alchemical secrets could it possibly hold?**

 **For the Rebirth of the Daily Weird Thing [Competition] prompt: trapped in a cave**

"Ah." Escha bent down to look at a dull black crystal at the edge of the cavern. "Logy! Come look at this!" She picked up the shard, holding it between her pointer finger and thumb as she heard Logy's shoes crunch over the dirt.

"What is it?" he asked, coming to a stop as Escha bounced to her feet, turning to show him what she had found.

"Doesn't this crystal look suspicious?" she asked, her tail rising behind her as she felt herself getting more animated by the second. "It's nothing like the natural rock around here. That other crystal we found before had color, but this one doesn't."

Logix seemed to study the object in her hands for a second before giving a small shake of his head. "It just looks like a piece of onyx. I'll admit that it's different from the gems at the front of the cave, but there's nothing significant about it."

Her tail drooped within the next second and she could feel her energy draining away once again. Right when she thought she had found something significant to. "It _could_ be important."

"Perhaps." Logix glanced back down the tunnel they had come from. "I thought that archaeologist had said there was something suspicious about this cave, but so far it looks like an old mine for crystals and gemstones; specifically tourmaline from what we've been able to gather." Logix had to be referring to the yellow, pink, and green shards they had picked up on their way to this cavern. "There might have been others, but it's obvious treasure hunters got here first and made off with most of them."

"Then this crystal might be a black tourmaline," Escha said, hoping they hadn't really come all the way out here for nothing. Though, Logy had mentioned that the pink tourmaline was rare and that it might be possible to synthesize a new blitz core with it. So if anything she had that to look forward to when they got back to their atelier. "Those treasure hunters couldn't have found everything. I'm sure there's more deeper in. If Reyfer were here he would have found some hidden switch those scavengers had overlooked."

"Yeah," Logy agreed. "And he would have set off a trap and we would be running from another massive bowling ball right about now."

Escha sighed softly, watching as Logy walked to the other end of the cavern and into another tunnel running nearly adjacent with the first one. He always got slightly irritated around Reyfer; she suspected it was because of the treasure hunting thing, but she couldn't be sure. Maybe it was just one of those guy things.

"Wait for me!" she called, pocketing the stone before she ran into the tunnel after him, carrying a lantern in her other hand. It took her a bit longer than she would have liked to find Logy in the blanket of darkness, more-or-less walking blindly forward as far as she could tell. "You shouldn't wander off by yourself," she scolded as she fell into step beside him.

"We were done in that cavern, though, and you said you wanted to go deeper."

"Well, yeah, but how are you suppose to see where you're going without me?"

"Hmm?" Logy finally turned his head to meet her concerned gaze. "I was just following the light."

"What light?" she asked, having only recalled seeing her own since they had entered this cave.

The edges of Logy's lips turned up into a grin. "The one right there." He tipped his head in the direction he had been walking, and with a slight puff of her cheeks Escha looked forward, lowering the lantern to her side so it wasn't obscuring her field of vision.

He was right. There was a glimmer of light up ahead, bobbing in the air and fading every few seconds before reappearing.

A chill ran down her spine at the sight of it. "It's probably just a spirit."

"Won't know unless we go look," even as he said the words Logy drew his sword as he walked down the path.

Escha followed just a step behind him, hand hovering over her pouch that contained a few choice items for every expedition. Mainly a few healing items and then an assortment of elemental bombs, along with her trusty dream book - she hadn't parted with it since synthesizing it in her cauldron.

She came to a stop when they drew close enough for her to see the floating orb hadn't been a spirit, her hand falling away from her pocket. It was just a crystal, pulsing softly as it bobbed in place, looking as if its light was going to go out in any second. Right next to it was a gaping hole in the stone, splintered rock lying at the mouth of the entrance.

The tunnel itself continued going further, but this part of the cave looked like it had been broken through recently. "This must be what they meant by suspicious," Escha murmured aloud, stepping carefully around the slabs of rock, to raise her lantern along the clean-cut wall on the other side.

A multitude of images had been carved into the surface of the stone and she stepped into the ruins, blinking when sections of the wall began to glow: they were spaced out unevenly along the wall, shades of red, blue, green... every color imaginable coming from the crystals as they slowly changed colors, highlighting the stone around them and making the shadows stretch out along the floor.

"Ruins, but they're functional to a degree." Logix had stepped in after her, having sheathed his sword now.

"I wonder what they're for." She couldn't make much sense of the depictions on the wall: the stone was cracked, words from the ancient language faded so much she could barely make out the different letters.

"Let's take a look," Logy said, glancing at the illuminated stone as he passed by it, muttering a piece of a translation to himself. A possible word the faded letters might spell, some meaning of the pictures.

Escha blew out the flame in her lantern before following him down the hall, wondering what the people carved in the stone were doing. It reminded her of the pieces of the tablet they had found around Colseit, but this was one big mural and she couldn't make heads or tails of it.

She past by Logy as he stopped to look at a piece of the mural that didn't seem as damaged as the rest, her right foot lowered further than her left though, and she heard a distinct _click_ , just a moment later. "Umm." She stood very still for a second - just a second - and then she let out a scream when the stone began to rumble around her.

"Escha!" She heard Logy shout just before she felt a body slam into her, knocking her off the lowered pedestal and beyond the shifting stone.

Escha hit the floor with her arms raised above her head, tumbling head over tail a few times before she finally rolled to a stop, ears ringing from the sound of stone crashing against stone. She only took solace in the knowledge that she had heard another body hit the ground not too far from her. "Logy?" she murmured, "Are you alright?"

Her words were met with a groan. "Fine. I guess were camping here for the night, though."

She raised her head from the floor to see they were in a large cavern, with what she had figured was the door closed behind them. The only exit as far as she could tell.

They were trapped.

 **If you can figure out the shortened name of the deity at the top you get a cookie!**


End file.
